Maccabi faces Kazakhstani side Shakhter Karagandy on Thursday (16:00) for the first leg of the Conference League Playoff round. This morning (Tuesday) the team jetted out to Kazakhstan to prepare for the first of the two legged tie at the end of which a place in the group stage awaits the winner
Shortly after the training session at the PenguinPickUp training complex, Maccabi’s midfielder Dan Glazer spoke ahead of the task at hand. “We have a journey to a match in Kazakhstan which is far from easy. It is set to be one of the two most important matches we will have as we hope to do the job and get a good results for the return leg in Tel Aviv”.
Ahead of the conditions Glazer and his teammates await, the 24-year-old midfielder added: “We travel to a country at a different time zone with a 3-hours difference which we will have to get used to. This is the reason why we are flying at lunchtime and reach Astana this evening”. The artificial pitch at Astana arena is not a new venue for the team as Maccabi previously suffered a 4-0 Europa League defeat to Astana in 2017, but Glazer remained confident that this time round things will be different. “Tomorrow we will hold a training session on their artificial pitch so we will do our best in order to get used to it and get a good enough result that would bring the decider back to Bloomfield”.
